United States of Secrets, No Place to Hide

PBS’s Frontline has put out the first part of the documentary “United States of Secrets”, explaining in great detail how the US government came to spy on millions of Americans. It’s a two hours watch you might find worthwhile. Checkout this NYT piece about the series.

Also Glenn Greenwalds book “No Place to Hide” is worth your time. Preorder it in print or download to your Kindle today at Amazon. See Wired for a narrative and Ars Technica for images of NSA technicians implanting beacons in Cisco routers.

C-131/12 - International reactions, including Spain

Greg Sterling, Searchengineland:

There would appear to be numerous potential problems with practical implementation of the right to be forgotten. How much time must pass before lawful information becomes “outdated”? Will the rules be applied evenhandedly in separate jurisdictions in Europe? What about professional negligence or low-level public figures trying to control public perceptions; what information does the public have a right to know? #

Lisa Fleisher, Wall Street Journal:

An EU court ruling on Tuesday saying that Google must scrub search results because of personal-privacy concerns might perplex Americans, and yet seem perfectly logical to Europeans. #

Lily Hay Newman, Slate:

“How, ENISA asks, would government force the forgetting of a couple’s photograph when one person wants the photo forgotten and the other doesn’t? And how can data be tracked down and ‘forgotten’ when we don’t even know who has seen or stored it?” Stewart Baker wrote after the report’s release. #

Ignazio Fariza & Rosario E. Gomez, EL PAÍS:

The EU forces Google to remove links to harmful information. #

C-131/12 or how we will forget the present

At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge, which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. (George Orwell, “1984”)

An internet search engine operator is responsible for the processing that it carries out of personal data which appear on web pages published by third parties Thus, if, following a search made on the basis of a person’s name, the list of results displays a link to a web page which contains information on the person in question, that data subject may approach the operator directly and, where the operator does not grant his request, bring the matter before the competent authorities in order to obtain, under certain conditions, the removal of that link from the list of results (Court of Justice of the European Union, “C-131/14”)

Let me rephrase that. A search engine is responsible for the semantic meaning of the documents it indexes.

On fun with passwords, and mysterious profile changes from somewhere near Seattle

With some websites, you need a password to help it remember how you like its content being presented to you. With others, you need it to use an app, checkout online or read and write e-mail.

Some of these websites do a good job helping to keep your password safe. They help you to pick a string password and they store it salted and scrambled, leaving others who might break in unable to make use of it.

For some time I’ve been collecting screenshots from websites’ registration forms, taken whenever they blow things up. See this Flickr Album.

There is all kinds of craziness to be found. No or only some non-latin characters allowed, sending your password in clear in a confirmation mail and so on. The latest addition to the album is a screenshot of Microsofts Office 365 for Business, kindly asking you to not use a password with more than 16 characters. Storing it in clear text, huh?

No more than 16 characters

 

And there is more strange stuff in how Microsoft manages profile data. After this weeks announcement about the availability of OneNote for Mac OSX, being a sucker for this kind of announcement, I went ahead and installed it. After signing in with my Microsoft Account (or whatever they call it right now - name seems to change every so often), I receive an e-mail from MS informing me about a change to “name, birthday, country-region” done to my profile from someplace near Seattle. The mail also tells me to ignore it if I did so changes myself. Well, I did not.

“Locked & Chained” by Bala Sivakumar, CC-BY-SA. Screenshots by yours truly.

Let me use my devices, will you?

In 2012, Apple introduced AirDrop for Mac OSX and with iOS, brought it to iOS, too. Unfortunately, AirDrop != AirDrop and you cannot use both together. While sending something from one iOS device to the other, and from one Mac to another, you cannot send a photo from your iPhone to your Mac. Because AirDrop for iOS is compatible with AirDrop for OSX.

Mind you, this incompatibility is most likely not due to technical issues, but rather a product decision Apple took. Why? The heck I don’t know.

Since the emergence of computers in your trouser pockets, we started to increasingly see usage patterns where one user would use more than one device at a time. Well, not AT THE SAME time, but near enough. Working on your notebook to quickly switch to your phone to take a photo of the mind map your team created that you want to include in the document you are working on. Stuff like this. There is many more of these patterns out there, and they include the whole lot of computerized gadgets that make up our surroundings.

So why, why, can I not send a photo from my phone to my notebook? What is the reason for Apple taking the decision to restrict multi device usage in this way?

37balls

You don’t have to like Jason Fried, you don’t have to like RoR, and heck, you don’t have to like Basecamp (the product). I’m certainly not overly enthusiastic about any of this.

Regardless how you feel about it, head over to the retired 37signals website and read what Jason has to say about the future of his company.

“Beobachtungen” III

  • Thanks Alex for Ciaphas, the most heroic hero.

    „The Emperor has a nasty sense of humour.“

  • Size does matter.
  • Despite best efforts, some good-byes are forever.
  • Campaign is campaign, no way around it.
  • After the relaunch is before the relaunch.
  • Gaps will be filled.
  • Doing product is great.
  • Love is where your heart is.
  • Leave unnecessary things behind.
  • Bystanders get hit, too.
  • Good things don’t just happen. Neither do bad things.
  • Typing on an English keyboard is easy.
  • Taking it a step further feels very, very good.